Sea Shepherd International :: How Do La Jolla's Children Want to Use Children's Pool?

October 19, 2004

How Do La Jolla's Children Want to Use Children's Pool?

The Mayor and majority of the City Council of San Diego claim they want to evict the seals from the beach at La Jolla for the children. Captain Paul Watson asked the City Council what the children thought about it. It was clear that the City Council had not queried the children.

Although no recent poll has been taken from the children, a poll in 1999 at the Torrey Pines Elementary School revealed that 911 children wanted the seals to stay, and only 131 wanted the seals to be forced to be evicted.

This is from the website of La Jolla Friends of the Seals
http://weber.ucsd.edu/~jmoore/oldljfos/vitulina/ballot.html

How do La Jolla's children want to use Children's Pool?

Prior to the March 1999 City Council vote on the proposed dredging, a 4th-grade student at Torrey Pines Elementary decided that if the issue was over use of the Children's Pool, the children of La Jolla at least should be consulted in the process. She gave 5-minute presentations to the classrooms at Torrey Pines and to school assemblies at Bird Rock Elementary and La Jolla Elementary, and then distributed ballots like the one below to the students.

news_041019_1a

The response was overwhelmingly in favor of letting the seals
remain at the Children's Pool Beach

It should be noted that at that time, the issue seemed to be cast as "seals stay or go"; the children voted essentially on whether, given only that choice, they would rather use Children's Pool Beach for swimming or for seal-watching. When you add the results of this vote to the thousands of signatures on pro-seal petitions collected elsewhere, the conclusion is clear: for the majority of La Jolla's children, letting the seals stay is the first priority if a choice must be made.

news_041019_1b

Logo by LJFS Docent Liesl Schindler (age 15)